When debate moderator Wolf Blitzer brought up a hypothetical young, uninsured American in a coma, he asked, “Are you saying society should just let him die?” and the tea party crowd cheered, some shouting, “Yes!”

Rep. Ron Paul, the other candidate from Texas and the most libertarian of the GOP hopefuls, was more compassionate than that in his response, as a doctor and as a Christian.

Paul, a Baptist, referred to his early career working at the Santa Rosa hospital in San Antonio, where churches helped cover costs of needy patients so the Catholic system “never turned anybody away.”

“We’ve given up on this concept that we might assume responsibility for ourselves, that our neighbors, our friends, our churches would do it,” said Paul, an opponent to federal healthcare as well Medicaid and Medicare plans.

Update: Watch the crowd’s reaction (around the 1:00 mark).

He confirmed this position with a tweet from his official account: The individual, private charity, families, and faith based orgs should take care of people, not the government.

Raised in a Lutheran family, two of Paul’s brothers became ministers and he chose to “minister through medicine,” he told Beliefnet during the last election.

The idea that individuals and churches should have more authority over their own healthcare—and education and other matters, according to Paul—does strike a chord with some conservative Christian voters, particularly those who are concerned about federally funded programs whose money also goes to birth control, the morning after pill and other treatments they may oppose.

Michele Bachmann also emphasized the need for people, particularly parents, to make their own healthcare choices when she argued against Gov. Rick Perry’s inoculation of Texas girls with the HPV vaccine, a position that will appeal to some conservative Christians for the same reason.